As an introvert, the thought of striking up a conversation with a stranger is terrifying. The thought of having to do that with young people on the street worse still. And yet, I am all in when it comes to detached youth work.
Why?
Well, when I first moved to Bow, East London, to start an Eden Team, the church building was not exactly bursting with youth. To connect with young people, I had no other option but to take to the streets. This set me on a journey of valuing detached youthwork. Here are ten things I discovered along the way:
- Prayer
Lots of times we went out and met nobody. Sometimes we would have the smallest encounter. To save these times from feeling like failure we decided to reframe our ‘detached youth work’ as ‘prayer walking.’ We prayed over our neighbourhood, asked God to be in the dark corners and alleyways and claimed the places we stood as holy ground. No time was ever wasted. We prayed for God to lead our feet, and we would listen as we walked. We prayed for words and pictures, and to be guided to who we should speak to. We prayed for protection on the team, and when there was enough of us, we would have an indoor team praying for those who were out on the street.
- Timing
I can remember a team member excitedly texting that they had seen a large group of youths in the park. However, when we got out there, they had vanished. As we parted ways to go home, we spotted young people starting to reappear. It took us a few weeks to realise our youthwork time clashed with everybody’s dinnertime! And so, we experimented with various times, different days, and broke with our original plans, to meet more young people on the streets.
- Consistency
Consistency is key. If we said we were going to be somewhere, we would be there. Even when it rained. We would just bring big golf umbrellas. When Eden Bow started, we volunteered at the council led youth centre on the estate as a way of getting to know young people and supporting existing youth work. At that time, it was poorly run and there were a lot of weeks when the centre, without warning, remained closed. But our team always turned up and stayed on the doorstep to chat to young people. Sometime later those same young people told us this consistency meant they could trust us; they knew we would keep our word.
- Outstaying welcomes
Sometimes one-sided conversations happened. Youths would retreat further under their hoods. Instead of forcing the moment, we opted to simply say ‘hello.’ This was enough. We’d let them know we would be around next week and walk on. For some young people, asking questions about who they were and what they were doing only conjured up experiences of the police. Over time, being consistent, turning up and offering hot chocolate, convinced these youth we were not undercover detectives!
- Experience
Mary joining our team was a game changer for Eden Bow. When we split into small groups people always wanted to be with her. With years of detached youthwork experience on estates, she was highly skilled at talking to people she had just met. We learnt from the best and built up our confidence simply by watching Mary at work.
A neighbouring Eden team in Plaistow was built on detached work too. Bianca, the team leader, shared some of her experience to encourage and inspire us. Finding the right people to shadow and learn from, was key to accelerating our detached youthwork skill set.
- Their house, their rules…
Most youth clubs have rules, set by leaders, and agreed as a group- no swearing, respect one another, that sort of thing. On detached, however, it was their house, their rules. There came a time and place to challenge antisocial behaviour, but week one was not the time to ask them to put out their spliff or stop using the f word.
- Tough decisions
Detached youth work took us to the shadow side of our community. Though we could not afford to challenge everything we saw, some things had to be acted upon. Hearing things that put others’ lives at risk, a weapon being carried or stashed; a planned retaliation- we had a responsibility to our community and to the law with that information. Healthy relationships with the local police and the local authorities became as important, as those with the young people.
- Creativity
A football, a flask of hot chocolate, a pack of cards… a boat battery and an Xbox. Wait, what?!Yes, every Friday night we started to take out a computer screen, an Xbox, and a boat battery to the local park. For the first few weeks it was just me and my teammate Caroline playing on our own like fools but eventually teenagers came and joined in. We got creative with the stuff we had. Like, a game involving a nerf ball where you had to shout the name of whoever you were throwing too- a clever way to learn names quickly.
- Safety
Though we loved our community, we recognised it was not always the safest place to be, especially in the dark. We put together risk assessments and thought through safety of the team. Two things we implemented:
- Making sure someone knew where we were and when we should be back (check out the Susie Lamplugh Foundation for excellent training around this).
- We would take to the streets in mixed gender groups. On our estate it was safer for the women to go out together than the men. The lads on our estate would have felt threatened if approached by a group of all men.
- Listen
We listened to young people whilst on detached and remembered what they said next time we saw them. We took onboard what they told us, even when it was not in our five-year plan. A good example of this came from Eden Plaistow. Team leader, Bianca, kept hearing that the boys wanted football sessions, so she got herself FA trained and partnered with ‘Kick’ to run a football club, despite it not being her own passion. She listened and acted, and it bore fruit.
Like all things, practice made perfect. Well not exactly perfect. But we certainly grew our connection with local youth. So much so, we had regular activities running in the community. After a while we began to prioritize indoor sessions over detached. We had got comfortable inside our building (or XLP double decker bus!) and no longer fancied cold walks and awkward conversations. In doing so, we lost something. We lost those first contacts, those prayerful laps round the estate and we lost our connection to those on the edges. Eventually, we brought back ‘detached’ as an integral part of our regular rhythm. As we once again prayerfully took to the streets, we saw God show up with us. Striking up a conversation in the cold is not as terrifying as it once was, but it remains one of the most valuable parts of ministry.
Prayer:
Spirit, you who enabled the early church to break out of locked rooms, enable us to break out of our church buildings and youth centres to follow you onto the streets and into the stairwells and parks.
Jesus, you who walked amongst your community and spoke to the ignored and unseen, be with us as we walk amongst ours and lead us to those who feel ignored and unseen.
Father, you who faithfully seeks relationship with your people, help us to faithfully seek relationship with our community, even when it rains!
Amen.